Goodland School District built the new Central School on the old one’s former playground. According to the Sherman County Herald‘s July 13, 1950, edition, the bell was supposed to remain on the new school’s grounds.

But it didn’t.

When the school district tore down the school, the bell left Goodland.

The bell begins traveling

By Oct. 24, Goodland’s bell was in Topeka. Auditor Carl Bjorkman, a bell collector, had purchased it and taken it to his Topeka home. Then the bell joined the Free World in the Cold War.

The bell’s makers based it on the Liberty Bell’s design. The designers intended the bell to symbolize the differences between freedom in the West and Soviet oppression.

Only a year earlier, West Berlin had escaped the Soviet blockade that had tried to starve the city into submission. The Soviets and their allies had surrounded West Berlin for 11 months. The Western powers supplied the city by air. While the blockade endured, the world stood at the brink of war. In Korea, the Cold War had turned hot in June.

As a fundraising effort, the Freedom Bell toured U.S. cities, including Kansas City and Denver, carried on a truck. Whether the bell had passed through Goodland is unknown.

The bell rings for freedom

Bells in the Free World rang at 11:03 a.m. Oct. 24, 1950, at the same time as the World Freedom Bell rang in Berlin. Bjorkman had donated the use of the bell to mark the occasion in Topeka. A “spontaneous parade” broke out on Topeka’s Kansas Avenue, where the bell “did itself right proud,… lending its deep tone of approval for freedom for all mankind,” said the Herald‘s Oct. 26, 1950, edition.

Central School Bell now sites on Sherman County Courthouse’s lawn after many stops on a long, strange trip.

The bell comes home

The bell stayed in Topeka another eight years until Bjorkman returned it to Goodland. He had it placed on a cement platform in front of the Sherman County Courthouse “at a height children could reach,” according to the Sept. 11, 1958, Sherman County News. “The bell has sounded many times and children take delight in ringing it themselves.” He dedicated the bell “to the children of Sherman County.”